How did you use your home equity loan?
About a year and a half ago we applied for (and recieved) a home equity loan for our other house. We decided we would use almost half of it as a downpayment on this house and the other half fixing up the other house. The application process was really easy for us as we have decent credit (though I haven’t checked it in over a year, we are due). We got a good interest rate and went about our day.
We would do it again. I mean, we had a good experience getting that loan and it isn’t a large loan. I have heard of people who thought that getting a home equity loan was the answer to everything – lower rate vs the bills they were paying so it made sense. And I suppose to some extent, that is a great idea. There are a lot of factors that play into it such as how long will you stay in the house and what are the interest rates of your other debts.
We still have a lot of equity in that other house, but we have no intention of getting another home loan to pay off our debt. Getting that first loan was good for us – other then the downpayment, all of the fixing up we did to the home was paid for. And we raised the equity just a little bit more by doing those improvements.
But before we got that loan we talked about getting one to pay off our debt. We debated it for quite a while because our interest rates were what was holding us back. In the end we decided to not pay off debt with any home loans because it was (is) so little debt. My student loan interest rate is rockin’, there is no way you could get a loan to match it so it wouldn’t make sense to roll it into a different loan. The interest on the car is pretty good as well.
How about you, did you get a home equity loan? What did you do with the money?